


Salvage what remains

by MissTeaVee



Series: Our Survival is our Strength [8]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, giving respect to the dead as best you can, no happy ending, rushed mass graves, spoilers for the mandalorian season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissTeaVee/pseuds/MissTeaVee
Summary: She will not leave until she has done what she must. Her people deserve that.
Series: Our Survival is our Strength [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707184
Comments: 35
Kudos: 133





	Salvage what remains

She was their Leader, their Armorer. It was her whom they obeyed and gave their faith to. She was record-keeper, weaponsmith and and lore-master.

She had led her people to their destruction. They’d had no choice by their Creed.

The Armorer, they called her, if they did not call her _Chieftain, Alor, Matriarch_. She who armed them, rebuilt their protective shells, who was their spiritual guide when they most needed it.

They need her now, though they are all dead.

She hauls the body of Abara Ranov by the armpits, dragging the fallen warrior deeper into the tunnels. They had been one of the first, fighting so fiercely to lure the Imperials away from the small group of Foundlings and their finders that had been sent to escape the planet. Abara had adopted two children, and though one of them has been a full adult for a decade, Abara would never have allowed that daughter to remain here and die when she could instead be sent to care for her little brother. The Clan Chieftan had been surprised to see the daughter amongst the Foundling escort, but immediately understood at a glance.

Once she has the warrior’s body safe within the confines of the sewer, where the Stormtroopers have already swept and thought deserted, she sets about her grim task. Abara is still masked, bless them, though so many of Her warriors had had their helmets ripped off after their spirits had faded out of their bodies. She does not blame them for that. It was the first thing An Enemy tended to do after killing a Mandalorian. Unable to do it when their opponent was alive, they did it in death, and thought themselves powerful for it. Those who were unmasked in death, or worse, near-death were still Mandalorian, and she wishes she could soothe their furious, vengeful spirits. When she is done her Labour, she will speak Remembrance for every Mandalorian whose body or armor she’ll have found.

Abara’s body is the first, but soon she has many more; Jalla, Adiz, Raden, Hurim, too many to name all at once. She piles them together, still armored, and then pours starship fuel over the pile of corpses.

A pit and pyre would’ve been more traditional, but flames, at the very least, are considered necessary if at all possible. She leaves them to burn, and goes to collect as many more as she can.

* * *

Slipping silently through the catacombs, she hears shouting from above. She pauses to listen, hearing harsh voices yelling at each other to _hold him!_ and crying out in sharp yelps now and again. _Come on Mando show us your pretty face and we’ll make it quick!_

She snarls silently and activates the jetpack she hadn’t really expected to need, glad for the ungrated opening above. She finds four living and five dead stormtroopers surrounding a Mandalorian who leans up against a wall, holding his guts in place with one hand, a blaster in the other. _Mandokarla!_

She snaps the first stormtrooper’s neck, becoming a blur of motion. She has but a single blaster and her body, but is fresh, uninjured, and full of focused fury. The four living stormtroopers surrounding her warrior quickly join the five that he had already dispatched. She stands for a moment, listening for more before approaching her fellow Mandalorian, who is slumping slowly to the ground.

“A-Alor…”

“Well fought, Jaedan Marka,” She murmurs him, her voice as calm and light as always. “I will bring you back to the Covert.”

“I… I’m not gonna survive, Chief. Not for long.”

“I know,” she wraps her arms around him to bring him home anyway.

* * *

She drags Jaedan the same way she’d have hauled a corpse. He’s no more difficult to drag than one, other than she’s being mindful not to move his arms away from where he’s still trying to keep his intestines in his body cavity. A futile effort, perhaps, but she can’t blame him for trying.

The first pile of bodies she’d left to burn is still smouldering, the smell enough that she must breathe deeply a moment to keep from gagging. Jaedan, weak, chokes and coughs and she reaches one hand under his chin to tilt his helmet just enough that if he vomits, it won’t asphyxiate him. He doesn’t throw up, but it may be more that his body’s too weak for it than willpower at this point.

She lays him down near the wall in the Forge, under one of the lights, and inspects his injury. It is surprisingly clean, his organs uninjured, though his intestines are trying to escape through the awful hole that must’ve been opened by some kind of blade. It’s not a pleasant sight, but she does what she can to put everything more or less in place and wraps a tight bandage to keep it there. It’s only delaying the inevitable, they both know it, but Jaedan thanks her softly and thunks the back of his head against the floor. She goes to look through the medical ward to see if they have any bacta, and finding some, returns with it, opening the bandage just enough to spread the bacta into his body. He lets out a noise that is beyond pain.

“Perhaps it will help,” She tells him. He nods weakly.

“Hurts less… thank you,” He mumbles. She supports his head and has him drink a little water through a straw. Then she must return to her task of collecting the Fallen, so she leaves him there in the Forge with a blaster on his chest. He is dying, but he has not asked her to ease his passing to the Manda, so she will let him linger as long as he wishes to.

* * *

Another dozen bodies are burning in a pile, and she has gone back to collect the armor of those burned in the first pile. To her unhappiness, their bodies are not wholly gone, but the flames have burned the flesh beyond recognition, their faces now forever gone, to be forgotten except by their lingering spirits. It is enough.

She removes a mask from their empty remains, and places it in her hovertrolly, then goes to retrieve the rest of that gear. She catalogues them in her head as she works. Abara’s mask, Adel’s chestplate, Sisko’s vambraces. Everything she stacks outside the forge for now, though she will melt it down later, burning away paint and wiring until only the beskar metal and electronics remains as molten steel that she will form into ingots. It will be reforged again, if not by her, by someone else, and it will someday shine upon a Mandalorian’s body again. _This is the Way._

The words ring hollow, sometimes.

* * *

She rests only briefly, taking just as long as it needs to eat and drink something before she is back to work. She stops to check on Jaedan, and is surprised that he is still lingering on. He lifts his head as she approaches and she wonders how much the bacta is helping. They do have excellent bacta, stolen and bred from the Old Republic’s Kaminoan stocks by one of the Covert’s Young Elders, the brave souls, but for a simple bacta wash to heal a wound that generally requires a full take setup? Unlikely.

“Alor,” He says, the words clearly costing him. “The Children… did they get away?”

She remains silent a long moment, thinking about it. “I hope so. I did not recieve any communication from them after they signaled that they were ready to steal a ship, and I have yet to overhear anything that suggests the Imperials caught them.”

“That’s… that’s good,” He wheezes, choking. She kneels beside him and uses a rag to daintily wipe the blood off his chin and neck where it’s showing. If she thought he could survive his wounds, she’d have pulled his helmet off by now, claiming that she was the closest thing available to a doctor and that the Creed would allow it. It would be acceptable. But he is dieing, and she can only prolong him. “I hope they did… I-”

“They are guarded by a strong group,” She says.

“Yes… I… I should tell you something Alor… Edii… Arivi…”

“Ahh,” She says, a decade-old mystery resolving itself. “So you are the one who sired her children.”

“No,” He says softly, the words spilling out now. “Just the first one. She... approached me, she said that she knew as strongly as I follow the Creed, that I wasn’t interested in children of my own… and… she wanted one to raise by herself.”

“Edii was always willful,” The Clan leader tells him fondly. “She had spoken to me before of wanting children to raise from infancy. I had reminded her there was nothing against the Creed to birth them herself if she so wished, but she did not want a partner. I had wondered if she’d taken a man from the Covert or some other place to conceive the offspring she wanted.”

He laughs weakly, and coughs. “I remember the speculation when she-she told everyone she’d gotten pregnant. I knew but… but I wouldn’t tell. I just shrugged when they asked my opinion.”

“Hmm,” She nods, smiling to herself under her helmet despite it all. “Edii is _Mandokarla_ , she and her children will endure.”

There’s a long, tired sigh from Jaedan. “I don’t think I did right by the Creed… conceiving Arivi for Edii and then…not being there as a parent.”

“Perhaps… perhaps not. Edii needed you only as donor for the parts she could not provide herself,” Says the Clan Chief, her tone never changing. She has heard many a deathbed confession, and she rarely offered either condemnation or absolution. She doesn’t think the dying Mandalorian is seeking either of those things anyway. He just needs someone to _know_.

“Yeah… yeah,” He murmurs, voice hoarse. “I wish… I wish I could’ve provided her something tangible though. Trained her in something, given her a knife. So she’d know when her mom finally did tell her about me that… that I knew she was coming into the world because of my actions, she wasn’t an accident her mother decided to keep… I chose to help bring her to this universe. ”

She considers his words after that. Jaedan has fallen silent, as if he’s used up all the remaining voice he’d had left. She glances towards him once, and his chest still moves. He yet lives.

* * *

The burned corpses of her people she transports to the lava river. An Ignoble disposal, perhaps, but it burns up the rest of the remains. She has not found everyone. She has no doubt that the Imperials have claimed some of their bodies and armor as trophies, but she hopes that others yet have escaped off world, or are hiding somewhere in the town.

She prays none were taken alive.

She’s found one set of armor that was clearly abandoned. She Understands, though it saddens her. She gathered up the plates and brought them back to the Covert. Good luck willing, she will be able to provide real Beskar’gam for the foundlings out there somewhere. (After days, she’s yet to see or hear sign of anyone in the Foundling group. It’s a hopeful sign that they escaped.)

* * *

She doesn’t blame Din Djarin. It wasn’t his fault. When he angered the Imperials he did so alone without informing the Tribe of his intentions. Had his plan worked, the Mandalorians would not have found out and come to his rescue. They would have remained hidden in their Covert and no one on Navarro would’ve been any the wiser of the Tribe. But one of theirs had overhead the bounty hunters planning to kill him and the child he’d rescued, and upon knowing that, their Creed was that they go save both him and Foundling.

Djarin had escaped with his little one. She hopes that the both of them are well.

* * *

She investigates a disturbance and finds Jawas nervously encircling the still-breathing form of another Mandalorian. The scavengers look up at her approach but don’t scatter. Instead they chatter at her, one tugging the ill-off Mandalorian’s wrist as if trying to encourage her to get up.

One of the Jawas speaks slow enough for her to get the gist of what’s happened, and she glances over to see a tiny bundle that’s being sheltered by one of the adults. Opposite the downed Mandalorian are Imperial corpses. She nods and inspects her injured warrior.

“H-Hello Alor,” whispers Gia, her breath almost spent. “I tried to stay alive for the Covert…”

“You did as the Creed required,” The Clan leader tells her. “You protected a child in need.”

Gia’s body relaxes in her arms, and she sighs regretfully, gathering up yet another corpse. The Jawas chatter, one tugging her arm to offer use of their hoversled. She refuses, knowing to accept would put the child that Gia died for in danger again.

She warns them to not be found with anything they salvage off the Imperials, and asks that if they find any more Mandalorians, to drop their armor down to the sewers, and if possible burn the bodies. They say they will, but she won’t be surprised if pieces are missing. It isn’t greed on the Jawas behalf, mere survival, and she can’t trace down every scrap of beskar on her own.

* * *

Jaedan still lives, three days after she found him. She unwraps his abdomen and he hisses painfully as she inspects the injury. The bacta has done him some good, but not enough; the wound is festering, and his blood is poisoned. She doesn’t have enough of anything to cure him. He makes a pained noise when she carefully resettles the bandages.

“I don’t want to die,” He tells her. “It would’ve been easier in battle. This waiting gave me time to be afraid.”

She nods in understanding and gently clasps his helmet in her hands, pressing the crown of hers to his in solidarity. He has not asked her to end his suffering, and she won’t dishonor his struggle by making the offer. He knows she would do it if asked.

“Alor…” He says. “Am I a coward for not wanting it to hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” She replies, offering him water and broth. He drinks a little of each before pain makes him stop. He sighs miserably. “When the time comes, the pain will go away.”

“That’s good,” He murmurs, dropping his helmeted head back to the floor. “I wish… no I don’t wish… but I thought… maybe I was here to help you one more time. If the Imperials came I could still shoot them. But they have not come. I will not die like a warrior.”

“I disagree,” She says to him. “Your wounds came from battle, taking a long time to die does not take that away. You slew five of your foes, and when I found you, you were fighting with your body ripped open.”

“Thank you,” He says. She knows it is little comfort, but it is something.

* * *

When she hears the death rattle escaping his lungs, she puts down her tools and approaches him, kneeling at his side. He shudders, and she places a gentle hand on his shoulder, the other wrapping around his hand. His trembling eases some, and she speaks to him as the life finally starts to flow free of his broken body.

“When your body has been cremated I will take your helmet and save it,” She tells him. “Arivi will be Ten soon, old enough for her first real beskar helmet. When I forge her that helmet, I will melt yours down for the material.”

He doesn’t answer, and she wonders if she was heard. Then he nods, so slowly. “Thank you Alor…”

It’s a sigh, barely heard. His fingers slacken, and she hums to herself and to him, monotone and tuneless, but there until the end.

“Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum, Jaedan Marka,” She tells the body. “Well fought, Mandalorian.”

**Author's Note:**

> Mandokarla- having the *right stuff*, showing guts and spirit, the state of being the epitome of Mando virtue
> 
> Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum - Daily remembrance of those passed on *I'm still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal.* Followed by repetition of loved ones' names.


End file.
